


Smoke Break

by ThEpicjellyfish



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Cigarettes, Crack Treated Seriously, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Use, Drugs, Fluff, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Not Beta Read, Pre-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Pre-Slash, Smoking, Underage Drug Use, Weed, canon innacuracies because i cant be bothered to check my own writing, could be pre-slash could be pre-severitus its up to u really, just two guys with ptsd chatting, not too dd:dne but ill tag it anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:55:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26038282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThEpicjellyfish/pseuds/ThEpicjellyfish
Summary: Harry and Snape smoke weed and reach an understanding. Set right after Harry is brought to Grimmauld Place.(As you can see, I've tagged this as Crack Treated Seriously and DD:DNE. Keep that in mind.)
Relationships: Harry Potter & Severus Snape, Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 18
Kudos: 219





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is purely self-indulgent crack, born from a comment my friend made to me during one of my Snape-tangents. She said "Snape really needs to smoke a blunt and talk about his feelings" and after I was done laughing my ass off I couldn't get the idea out of my head. I wrote most of this drunk, high or at 3 am because I'm a mess, so enjoy.

Ron and Hermoine had been here for weeks while he had to deal with his relatives, and fucking dementors- what a load of bollocks! Harry dumped his trunk and bags in his room and made a beeline for the attic of Grimmauld Place, grabbing his pack of menthols and lighter as he went.

They’d arrived at the Order headquarters a little after 2 am, so he knew no one would come looking for him until morning. He’d told Remus after a brief hug that he was exhausted before he’d headed to his room. Harry climbed the rickety, spiraling stairs leading to the topmost floor of Grimmauld without so much as a glance behind him. 

Harry knew Sirius was in the house somewhere, and probably awake, but anxiety and anger had tied his stomach in knots. He would go see his godfather after his smoke. After. Everything had to come after he’d had a moment to himself, or he’d blow up and regret everything. 

As he struggled to wrench open the window, he briefly considered smoking inside, smell and lingering smoke bedamned, but as the thought crossed his mind the window gave a little shriek and popped open. Harry crawled out onto the dirty shingles and moved to sit beside the window, looking out onto the backyard of the house. 

He opened his pack, pulled out a joint and popped it in his mouth, lighting up and taking a deep, fortifying breath. Harry’s eyes fell closed as he inhaled deeply, pulling in air after his hit and exhaling, long and measured. As he went to take another hit, he opened the pack of cigarettes one more time to retrieve a menthol and tuck it behind his ear, for later. His hair was such a mess that it covered the white of the paper completely, and kept the cig from prying eyes. It wouldn’t be fun if he was caught and chewed out by Mrs. Weasley for  _ smoking.  _

The sky was dark and overcast, sounds of the city muffled by the powerful wards on the house. It was a fairly hot night, temperature perfect for Harry and his penchant for being chilly in all seasons. After three or four hits he could feel the tension bleed from his body, finally making way for bone deep exhaustion.

“ Potter, what on earth-” If Harry hadn’t been halfway through his joint, he would’ve startled at the sound of Snape’s irritated growl coming from the window beside him. But he’d been awake for more than 24 hours, and hadn’t had a decent meal for just as long. The energy to care about being caught smoking on a roof by his professor? He just didn’t have it at the moment. 

“Are you smoking pot?” The utter incredulity in the Potion Master’s voice prompted Harry to actually turn and look at the other man. Snape was leaning out the window, arms braced on the sil with his wand in a relatively loose grip. He was wearing what looked like a long sleeve tee and worn sweatpants- both black of course- but surprisingly muggle. It made the older man look softer, younger; the small part of Harry’s brain that hadn’t checked out the moment he lit up was shocked at how Snape looked, even as he glared at him. 

There were other things Harry noticed about him too; his paler-than-usual pallor, the way his body seemed wound tight like a spring and the heavy-lidded exhaustion in his eyes. Snape wasn’t staring him down, not like usual. No, he seemed like maybe he’d come for a bit of solitude too. In fact, when Harry’s gaze flicked down to the potion master’s hands he saw a wooden pipe, shiny and black just like the rest of him, clutched in his non-wand hand. 

It was 2 am and everyone else in the house was probably in bed. Harry realized he’d been staring, not answering, and Snape was looking tenser and moodier by the second.

“Are you wearing pajamas?” He blurted out, immediately regretting everything. Fuck, he was gonna get so many detentions. But Snape  _ was  _ wearing pajamas, it was beyond strange, and Harry had gone ahead and said the first thing that’d come to his mind like a complete idiot. 

Snape gave him a look of utter loathing, like he was thinking the exact same thing. Harry couldn’t help but notice the dark bags under his eyes, and again did something incredibly stupid. Marijuana in the wizarding world didn’t hold the same weight as it did for muggles, but still. He was sure there was a rule written somewhere that said ‘thou shalt not smoke cannabis with thy potions master.’ or something. 

Harry offered him the joint wordlessly. It was quite a normal gesture, in general terms; Snape stared at the offending apparatus in what seemed like numb shock, his eyes a little wide, his mouth drawn down into a tight line. It hung in the air between them, and just as Harry thought that maybe he really was going to die at the hands of his teacher that hated him, the older wizard reached out and plucked the burning thing from his fingers. 

The moment Snape took it, instead of watching him(his fucking professor!) Harry grabbed the cigarette from behind his ear and lit it up, just to have something to do with his hands. He looked up just in time to see Snape exhale a fat cloud of smoke and look at the joint with a thoughtful expression. After a moment they swapped, and Snape had the cigarette and Harry had the joint. 

The younger wizard watched the other inhale and grimace, before his professor quietly muttered. “Of course you would smoke this muggle menthol crap.” 

Harry snorted. “You certainly aren’t the first one to give me shit for it.” 

This was probably the quietest, nicest moment he’d ever had in Snape’s presence. Who knew all it took was a little weed to win over the nasty dungeon bat? Harry had to force a cough, lest he giggle at the thought. 

The deserted city before them had infected both wizards with a sense of calm; no nightmares, or oaths or dark lords could reach them here. When Harry saw the joint going down, he pulled out another and put the other out in seamless rotation. Snape made a soft noise that might’ve been a scoff, but otherwise said nothing and took a long drag of the new joint. 

Neither man knew how they’d stumbled upon this fragile peace, but they weren’t going to go out of their way to break it now. Still, Harry couldn’t resist pushing his luck.

“I keep waiting to wake up from this bizarre dream, but it hasn’t happened yet.” He muttered with humor. 

Snape sideyed him, blowing a bit of smoke out before fucking  _ smirking  _ “Why does it matter? No one would believe you if you told them about this.”

That had Harry fighting back horrified laughter, coughing a little on the smoke caught in his throat, because this was another level and who knew his evil git of a teacher could be so devious? In a funny way, not his usual ‘Potter, detention for breathing’ way. Stealing a glance at Snape, he saw that he’d relaxed a lot more. He had an elbow on the sil, his chin propped up in his hand- and a little quirk on his lips that was almost a smile.

This side of Snape was completely new to Harry; but he vowed silently to himself that he’d try to draw it out as often as he could. Clearly the guy was under a lot of pressure, playing for both sides. Maybe he was a completely different person, outside of all the acting and playing the field he had to do. 

“You’re different, like this.” Harry’s brain to mouth filter had said sayonara at this point; the small part of his mind that was rational, and screaming at him to ‘shut up, Potter, you utter wanker’ was drowned out by his high and the strange night. 

“I know we have to keep hating each other- keep up appearances, I mean- um. But I wouldn’t mind doing this again. I just- I’ve been realizing how much you do for the war, for me and I- You’re not a bad guy at all, is what I might be saying. Who knows, I’m stoned. Ignore me.” Please, Harry, shut the fuck up now. 

Harry felt Snape's burning gaze bore holes into his forehead as he hurriedly stuck his cig in his mouth to silence himself. The younger wizard didn’t take his eyes off his own hands, cheeks burning, waiting for the end. 

“Why in Merlin’s name would you want to spend any more time with me than you have to? It’s not like I haven’t given you every reason to hate me that I could think of.” The older man replied, and oh god, both of them were way too tired and totally not sober enough to have this kind of conversation. If they were sober they would never be having it in the first place. 

Harry didn’t say anything for a while, not sure how to respond. “Well it’s not like I didn’t figure that out eventually- and you’re one of the few people in this entire, fucked up secret society that treats me like a normal person. From everyone else it’s either hero worship, pity, or they hate me for shite I can’t control.” 

He paused and took another drag of his cigarette. “Or they expect me to be a carbon copy of my dad. I guess you also did that for a while too, but you have to keep up appearances for the all the kids reporting back to their parents.” 

Snape turned his eyes on Harry again, showing a myriad of emotions across his face, all hard to decipher. He seemed almost angry. “Don’t be daft. I publicly humiliate you whenever I have the chance. I’m not a nice man, it wasn’t always an act!” 

“Well you just admitted that it’s an act now! Why are you so afraid to admit you like me, professor?” That shut Snape up pretty effectively, because all he did was relight the joint that had gone out in his hands. 

Harry sighed, pulling his legs to his chest and resting his head on his knees, facing Snape. “You’ve always reminded me of my muggle teachers in elementary, kind of. The ones that knew from speaking to Petunia that I was a delinquent, but were still determined to teach me. It gave me a sense of normalcy amongst all the magic, in a place where suddenly I was popular and sought after for a glorified tragedy I don’t even remember. I dunno.” he laughed bitterly, remembering his first year. The months after his letter came, wondering if he’d go to sleep after classes that night and wake up in the cupboard. 

Snape looked very tired, as if every word Harry spoke took what little energy he had left. “You’re not anything like your father was, as your age.  _ How could you be, you’ve never met the man _ .” He mumbled the last sentence, but Harry heard it anyway. 

“Exactly! You understand. Fuck.” The teenager took a shaking breath, and then the joint when Snape passed it to him. They fumbled for a second when he nearly dropped it, hands brushing in the dark, but it made its way into Harry’s shaking hands and he hit it once, with feeling. 

After a few minutes of silence they had finished the second joint, and Snape lit his pipe, which (to Harry’s surprise) actually had weed in it. They passed it between each other wordlessly for a bit. 

“Albus wants me to teach you Legilimency this year. You’ll come to my office once a week after class, and call it remedial potions when anyone asks.” 

“Cool, we’ll be able to hang out more without anyone around to ruin it.” Harry replied absently. When he realized that he’d just indicated, verbally, that he’d enjoy hanging out with Snape(and his mind was really blown at that one) he looked up to see Snape staring at him with his eyebrow raised, a picture of unimpressed. 

“You realize you’re going to actually have to learn to be a Legilimens, right Potter?” 

“Oh yeah. It might just be the weed, but I’m feeling much better about it now than I would’ve if we hadn’t had this conversation.” The teen replied with good humor. It was true; he was feeling much better about Snape in general. Harry remembered how much of a hardass his professor was, and was quick to reassure him. “I’ll do my best to learn all I can from you.”

Snape’s face softened a little. “See that you do, Potter.” He straightened, Placing his pipe in his pocket and pulling himself back into the attic. The older man reached a hand out for Harry to help him inside. “Come now. It’s bedtime for wizarding saviours.” 

Harry smiled, caught the larger, rougher hand in his own and allowed himself to be lightly manhandled back into the attic. He felt beyond tired. When he stumbled on the stairs, Snape dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder and left it there. 

“To the kitchen first, I have a vial of dreamless sleep for you.” Snape said quietly. The younger man grunted a wordless acknowledgement and they made their way together through the house. The potions master beelined to a high cabinet in the corner and pulled out two small bottles, uncorking one and downing it and passing the other to Harry. 

“Thanks, professor. Good night.”

“Goodnight Potter.” Snape was rewarded with a blinding smile as Harry made his way upstairs. He went to his room, and fell asleep quicker than he’d had in years. 


	2. Back to School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry goes for a walk after the welcoming feast, to deal with his nerves and fumigate on the arrival of Dolores Umbridge. On impulse he finds Snape, goes and taps on his office window, and they proceed to have their second successful hang out. 
> 
> or 
> 
> Harry tests boundaries and Snape has his patience tested but because there's weed involved, everything turns out alright in the end.

Harry shivered under his invisibility cloak and absently waved his wand, muttering a warming charm. The sun had long since set and the night sky was blocked out by clouds, allowing Hogwarts to become a glowing beacon amongst the dark scottish countryside. After he’d sat through that ministry woman’s foreboding speech, he’d felt emphatically tired of it all. Harry sometimes thought that he might be the butt of some cosmic joke; never allowed to have a moment of peace, always in the thick of it. He hadn’t eaten anything at the feast, appetite thoroughly smashed by anxiety; he’d sipped some pumpkin juice and chatted with the twins, Ron and Hermoine, but remained distracted. 

Snape had been there. It wasn’t like Harry hadn’t expected him to be there, it would have been more alarming if he weren't. But seeing him at the head table, in the aftermath of that night that Harry was almost  _ sure  _ was a bloody hallucination, might have affected him more than he thought. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. 

They’d met eyes across the hall as Umbridge ended her boring little speech, and the professor had held his gaze. Snape had cocked an eyebrow ever so slightly, rolling his eyes as if to say ‘this bitch, am I right?’. Harry hid his responding smile behind his cup and in a moment of Gryffindor boldness, winked back at him. 

The older man had only held his gaze for a moment more before looking away, and Harry’s eyes were drawn to the brightly colored object that had suddenly appeared in Fred’s hand beside him. He spent the rest of the feast trying not to think about the exchange.

Now he was out of the castle an hour before curfew, with his smokes and the Marauders map, and he didn’t have anything to distract him. Harry had taken the closest secret passage out of the castle, which had unwittingly put him out by the edges of the lake, right by the windows that lined the walls of the dungeons. His sneaker-clad feet carried him around the base of the tower as he smoked, fretted and headed in no particular direction. 

It wasn’t long before he found himself standing in front of the window to Snape’s office. Harry could see him sitting at his desk, a rather large bottle of red ink beside a stack of student’s essays. 

He sat in the grass, spreading his cloak over himself and tucking it under his bum and legs to make sure he was still covered. His resolve to stay hidden didn’t last long though. 

As Harry went to grab his joint from behind his ear, he saw Snape drop his quill onto the desk and run a rough hand through his hair. The look on his face was equal parts exhausted, frustrated and miserable- clearly he needed a hit. Harry pulled the cloak over his head and tapped on the glass lightly.

Snape’s eyes flicked to the window and found Harry’s face in an instant. He stood and strode over to the window, wrenching it open, his expression drawn and suspicious. 

“What do you want, Potter?”

Harry grinned, completely unabashed. “You look like you needed a break, Professor. Thought I’d offer my glorious company, provide you with a quick reprieve from grading horrible first year essays.” 

“How do you know I’m grading first year’s work?” Snape answered after a moment of silence, his eyebrow twitching with some kind of repressed reaction. Harry only grinned.

“The expression on your face said it all, sir.” 

Snape scoffed, but moved aside and waved the young man through the window. “Come on, then. In you get, before someone sees you.”

Harry stuck his burning cig and unlit joint in his mouth and shuffled through the window, dropping down beside the taller man. He looked up at his professor with a pleased smile, pulling the joint out of his mouth and holding it out. “I’ll let you do the honors, since you’re hosting.”

Harry wondered if Snape ever got face cramps from raising his eyebrow like that all the time. The older man took the joint and stuck it in his mouth, lighting it in a casual display of wandless magic. 

“Wicked.” Harry blurted out, eyes locked on Snape’s hands.”I thought only Dumbledore could do stuff like that.” 

The potions professor met his eyes, a smug little twist in his lips. “That’s just what he wants people to think.” 

Harry watched out of the corner of his eyes as he hit his fug one more time and put it out in the ashtray on the desk. He was peeling back all sorts of layers on Snape, and it was kind of exciting. Maybe he was making a bigger deal of it than it was? But, Harry thought to himself, he wasn’t really making any sort of deal about it, because he still hadn’t told Ron or Hermoine about the little truce he and the Professor had going. He hadn’t told anyone. 

While Harry slid down to sit on the floor and have all these thoughts, Snape took a few strong pulls from the joint. He sank back down into his desk chair, released a big puff of smoke and stretched out in an uncharacteristic show of poor posture. There was another mind-boggling layer, gone. Harry wondered if Snape ever let his guard down like this around anyone else. 

The Potions Master pulled Harry out of his thoughts, stretching one long arm down to the floor to pass him the joint. “I don’t have to tell you what would happen if  _ anyone  _ found out we did this, let alone twice.” He said, fixing Harry with one of his lighter glares. It was dulled by the shiny, lidded look his eyes had already taken on. 

The teen shot him an offended look. “Oy, the wizarding world doesn’t have tobacco age laws, or weed restrictions. I’m totally legal here.” 

Snape scoffed. “You probably don’t know that there’s a law that prohibits teacher-student fraternization-” Harry tried very hard not to think of all the things that word could mean. He took a long hit while the older man continued, oblivious to any strange thoughts Harry might’ve been having. “- in which there is a clause that says professors and students are not to become intoxicated together in a casual setting. Hogwarts list of contraband includes both weed and cigarettes.” He looked at Harry very pointedly as he said this, knowing without a doubt that the younger wizard was beyond aware of the list on Filches’ office door.

Harry released his second hit and passed the joint back up to Snape. “Well you can just give me detention then!” He said brightly. “You wouldn’t have let me in if you hadn’t decided already to break those rules.You have to keep up appearances for the Slytherins anyway, since we’re with them for potions this year. We can put on a show, convince everyone we hate each other, and have an excuse to uh, do this . . . thing.” Harry trailed off sheepishly, realizing how stupid he sounded. When he looked back up at Snape he met with a narrow-eyed, but not entirely inconsiderate stare. 

The professor didn’t answer for a moment, taking his time and blowing a few O’s. Harry wondered if he’d finally crossed a line, suggesting that they would commit a premeditated law breaking or that they would continue these . . . friendly chats? If you could call them that. 

“If you maintain O’s and E’s in potions throughout the year, I’ll consider it.” Snape said finally. The boy-who-lived rolled his eyes at that. 

“Really, using my grades as a bargaining chip? You’re starting to sound like Hermoine.” His professor passed the joint back to him with a disgruntled expression.

“Please don’t compare me to miss Granger, ever.” 

“Hey, Hermoine is amazing!” Harry responded with mock-offence. 

Silence fell for a little while; Snape pulled his pipe from the desk and lit it. Soon the small office was hazy with smoke, the sounds of the fireplace crackling and the occasional scratch of a quill on parchment filling Harry’s chest with warmth. He was getting tired. 

“I never told them, you know.”He said, taking another hit from the(by now much shorter) Joint, and passing it up. 

“Told who what?” Snape asked, not looking up from his stack of papers as he took it. Harry scooted back against the stone wall, trying to pull himself out of the half-laying position he’d slipped into. 

“I never told Ron and Hermoine that we ran into each other at 2 am on a roof and got high together.” Harry answered with dry humor but continued to stare at his hands, not daring to look up. “Also I’ll do my best in class. O’s and E’s only. But I reserve the right to ask homework questions if I’m going really spare over an essay you gave, or something.”

When the silence came to be too much, the young man finally glanced at Snape’s face through a curtain of his hair and saw . . . well he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The professors face was twisted with a myriad of emotions; bemusement, caution, maybe a little fondness? He met Harry’s gaze finally, and his eyes were warm. 

“One toe out of line, Potter, and we’ll be back to strictly professional interactions. Don’t test me.” The professor’s mild tone, and his expression as he relit the joint and passed it down to Harry completely ruined the harshness of his words. Harry smiled at him, and Snape smiled back.

“Yes, Sir.”

A sleepy silence fell as they finished the joint and the castle settled firmly into its first night of the semester. Outside the office, the echoing sounds of students and ghosts in the halls, moving stone and suits of armor faded away.  Harry felt nothing but content, if only for the moment. Thoughts of Umbridge, the Ministry, ~~Cedric,~~ and Voldemort fell to the back of his mind finally and he allowed himself to doze right there at the foot of his potions professor’s desk.

A while later, he was shaken awake by a large pale hand on his shoulder. Harry opened his eyes and found that during his little nap, he’d slid over to rest his head on Snape’s knee. 

“Come on now. It’s time for you to sneak back to your dorm, little hellion.” The older man’s voice sounded rough, like he might’ve dozed off too. 

A small bottle of dreamless sleep was passed down to him and the Gryffindor tucked it in his robes, raising his other hand to his mouth as he stifled a yawn. Finally Harry shuffled forward and used the edge of the desk to pull himself up. 

“Thanks for having me over, Professor. Goodnight, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” Harry winked cheekily like an afterthought, and hoisted himself up through the open window, back into the night. 

“Good night Potter. And for Merlin’s sake, put that infernal thing on!” Harry laughed as he heard the window slide shut behind him, and threw the invisibility cloak over himself. Things might end up being tough this year, Harry thought to himself, but he had a sneaking feeling that it wouldn’t be all that bad. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, chapter 2. I'm an incredibly sporadic writer and procrastinator, so don't ever expect regular updates from me, but I can totally see this story going somewhere. I struggle with minor substance abuse issues and have since I was a little younger than Harry is here- while I don't think weed is bad or good, I personally have leaned on it too much in the past in order to deal with trauma, and so it's easy for me to write Harry picking up the same habit as a coping mechanism. This story, whatever fandom I might've written it in, has been a long time coming. I welcome all suggestions, comments and observations. Thanks for reading and remember to drink water<3

**Author's Note:**

> I live for feedback, tell me what you think!


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